WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Henry David Thoreau
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I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel
together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he
went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of
exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be
companions or coöperate, since one would not _operate_ at all. They
would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. Above
all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start to-day; but he
who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may
be a long time before they get off.
But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I
confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic
enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among
others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have
used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some
poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do,—for the devil
finds employment for the idle,—I might try my hand at some such pastime
as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this
respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining
certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain
myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they
have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. While my
townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their
fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less
humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for any
thing else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are
full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am
satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I
should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling
to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from
annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater
steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I would not
stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work,
which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say,
Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely
they will.
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many
of my readers would make a similar defence. At doing something,—I will
not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,—I do not hesitate
to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it
is for my employer to find out. What _good_ I do, in the common sense
of that word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part
wholly unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are and such
as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with
kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I were to preach at all
in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being good. As if the
sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a
moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin
Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and
tainting meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily
increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such
brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in
the mean while too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it
good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going
about him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly
birth by his beneficence, had the sun’s chariot but one day, and drove
out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the
lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and
dried up every spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at
length Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and
the sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year.
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It
is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man
was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I
should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the
African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and
ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should
get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my
blood. No,—in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A
man is not a good _man_ to me because he will feed me if I should be
starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch
if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that
will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for one’s fellow-man in the
broadest sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man
in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a
hundred Howards to _us_, if their philanthropy do not help _us_ in our
best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of a
philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good
to me, or the like of me.
The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the
stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. Being
superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were
superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the
law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the
ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by,
who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely
forgiving them all they did.
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be
your